Success comes to people with vision and absolute dedication. Worth mentioning, it also comes to people who choose to work differently. Having an engineering degree from IIT Madras and batch mates who went abroad for better prospects in life, Vijay H Madhusudan chose to stay back so as to serve his motherland with the expertise he has. “I started my first venture in sustainable technologies in 2009 where I had a brief stint with the solar industry. I stepped back as I believed that being successful in this industry needed a lot of moneyand political clout. Subsequently, we plunged into LED lighting and developed over 100 technical lighting products to provide energy efficient and sustainable lighting solutions to commercial establishments. We were able to cut the lighting load by over 80 percent and also reduce a substantial air conditioning load”, says Vijay H Madhusudan, Founding Partner, Enfrien Innovations.

The inflection point to step back into the Solar Industry arrived when Vijay was in discussion with a general manager from Aditya Birla Group. The manager had expressed a problem of excessive water evaporation from their raw water ponds and also having a need for solar energy. “Naavi” came out as a response from Enfrien which is their proprietary panel mounting structure that enables installation of floating solar PV power plants on water that solves two major problems in one go. Firstly, it reduces evaporative losses by over 80 percent there by making it a great water conservation initiative and secondly it solves the problem of usage of large tracts of land for solar projects as it is a land neutral solution. Enfrien has optimised the design and materials used in developing Naavi to ensure that they offer the lowest upfront costs with the longest lifespan for the developers as against competitors.

A Journey full of Promises
The journey for Enfrien since inception has been full of obstacles. Despite that, the company has gained a lot of acceptance in the market. “One of our achievements is partnering with Fichtner and Co. KG, Germany, which is one of the largest independent consultants in Germany to conduct the feasibility studies for over 550MW of land neutral systems in India.We were selected as one of the top 20 start ups in Pitch fest 2018, an all India start up competition conducted by

Amrita TBI for selecting the most promising start ups. We have been incubated by Amrita TBI and also recognised by Government of India as an innovative start up under the Start up initiative. We have been awarded a grant under NIDHI Prayaas program to develop prototype of our product”, states Varun.

Varun H M, Founding Partner

Growth & Future Prospects
Enfrien is presently self funded and is in theprocess of fund raising to commercialise the product. Expressing the current status of the company and plans, Vijay concludes, “We have a promising product with a great market potential. The estimated market size for the mounting structures for floating solar alone is over INR 3,00,000 crores. Our product can further be doubled up to be used as modular mounting structures for rooftop solar installations. These factors make Naavi a great investment opportunity for a potential investor. We are in talks with a few large EPC companies and end clients to use Naavi. The clients are interested and looking forward to a prototype.”